Girls & Sex
Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Time Top 10 Book of the Year • A San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year
The author of the New York Times bestseller Cinderella Ate My Daughter offers a clear-eyed picture of the new sexual landscape girls face in the post-princess stage—high school through college—and reveals how they are negotiating it.
A generation gap has emerged between parents and their girls. Even in this age of helicopter parenting, the mothers and fathers of tomorrow’s women have little idea what their daughters are up to sexually or how they feel about it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with over seventy young women and a wide range of psychologists, academics, and experts, renowned journalist Peggy Orenstein goes where most others fear to tread, pulling back the curtain on the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important possibilities of girls’ sex lives in the modern world.
While the media has focused—often to sensational effect—on the rise of casual sex and the prevalence of rape on campus, in Girls and Sex Peggy Orenstein brings much more to the table. She examines the ways in which porn and all its sexual myths have seeped into young people’s lives; what it means to be the “the perfect slut” and why many girls scorn virginity; the complicated terrain of hookup culture and the unfortunate realities surrounding assault. In Orenstein’s hands these issues are never reduced to simplistic “truths;” rather, her powerful reporting opens up a dialogue on a potent, often silent, subtext of American life today—giving readers comprehensive and in-depth information with which to understand, and navigate, this complicated new world.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We want to be friends with Peggy Orenstein, whose 2011 book Cinderella Ate My Daughter was one long “exactly!” about our culture’s limiting notions about kids and gender. Girls & Sex reinforces our belief that Orenstein is a hugely important thought leader when it comes to pointing out the ways societal norms shortchange young people. Drawing on interviews with 70 girls and young women between the ages of 15 and 20, she draws attention to troubling truths about their body images, definitions of success, and capacity for intimacy. Orenstein’s lively writing, sparkling wit, and wide-eyed curiosity about pop culture balance her sobering findings—we’re recommending this book to all the parents and teachers we know.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestselling journalist Orenstein follows up Cinderella Ate My Daughter with a look at what happens when the little princess hits puberty. The result is an eye-opening, sometimes horrifying look at sex for today's girls and young adults. Through frank interviews, research, and school visits, Orenstein reveals that, on average, young women are engaging in sexual contact earlier than ever, in more varied ways, and reporting more coercion and less satisfaction than their male counterparts. She cuts through many of the prickly topics associated with girls' sexuality in contemporary culture, including purity debates, hook-up culture, arguments about what girls wear, rape and consent on college campuses, the problem of porn, and what kind of sex education actually works. She looks briefly at gender fluidity and touches on the concerns of LGBTQ young women. Orenstein draws powerful, humane portraits of her interview subjects, self-reliant young women who find themselves trapped by sexist stereotypes about women's bodies and women's pleasure. In this smart, earnest, and timely assessment, Orenstein urges frank, open communication among trusted adults and curious teens, declaring it the best way to encourage girls and boys to make safe, healthy decisions that "end in joy and honor rather than regret, guilt, or shame" and achieve "intimate justice."
